Top Bar Hive Flow Forum

Flow Hive
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A Forum for Top Bar Hive Flow BKeepers

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http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/a-warm-welcome-from-flow-hive/32?u=elizabethh

This Forum will follow the Flow Hive Guidelines!

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Now this forum is going to be fun. Flow hives on top bars? I don’t see how without dismantling the roof on mine.

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I imagine there would be a few modifications to match up to a top bar hive, all do-able with a few tools. @ymcg our website guru uses top bar hives and is planning on adapting his to work with the flow hive. I’m sure he’ll keep us updated when he gets time.

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I have a plan underway to ‘super’ the Flow onto a Top Bar Hive, well add it to the end so I don’t have to change all my bars (and defeat the purpose of light-weight top bar beekeeping).

Here goes:

A normal Lang box on left, and a small TBH on right:

I cut a large hole in the end of the TBH:

and in the Lang so they line up:

add Flow frames

and a queen excluder if you like (I prefer not to)

view from inside, with a small hive beetle trap showing on the floor

view from the Lang end

view from TBH end

the complete bits

Now to add bees!

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That looks like an interesting project.I have just finished building my top bar hive while I wait for my flow hive. I would like to upload a few photos.

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Hi @Ken_Grady, Welcome to the forum. It doesn’t usually take long to become a trusted user. If you keep looking around the forum and do a couple of replies you will soon be able to add images.
It is easy to upload images, just drag and drop them in when you are writing a reply.

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Hi Jake I didn’t realise it was that simple, thank you for the heads up.

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Thanks @Jake I was wondering about that with images… and @Ken_Grady the upload was super easy, just drag n drop!

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Hi. I live in Helotes, Texas (a small suburb of San Antonio). When I lived in Michigan I had 6 hives (30 years ago) and now that I recently retired am getting back into beekeeping largely because the flow hive should minimize the heavy lifting and honey extraction labor. I was going to wait until I receive my flow hive but my wife and I decided to start a Kenya top bar hive now. I have been thinking of ways to link the flow hive when I discovered others are also working on the idea. It will be some time before I can try to link, but I will keep that in mind as I design and construct a new TBH.

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Please let us know if it works.

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Hi Stuart,
I have just finished doing exactly the same as you are intending to do by building a top bar hive while I wait for my Flow Hive to arrive, I will post a few photo’s very soon.

Good luck with yours.

Regards Ken.

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I am considering just building a Lang. hive and using it as a vertical TBH/ Warre hive but with Lang. dimensions. I will add a quilt on top and everything else like in a Warre. I will let the bees build their comb from top to bottom like in Nature/a Warre too.

Either that or actually building a Warre Hive and topping the hive with a small 3 row Flow box somehow.

I look forward to seeing everyone’s pics and stories.

Thanks,

Marty

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I just moved the girls into the modified TBH yesterday, now to wait as they build up to fill the hive, before I can add the Flow super at the end… its coming into winter here in Byron Bay Australia so we may have to wait till Spring sadly ;(

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Beautiful, love what you have done, basically taken the follower board concept and used it as queen excluder. How would a flow hive fit in this, however? Or are you not intending to combine the two?

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Hi SowthEfrikan,
Thanks for the comments, no I do not intend to join them but just leave it as a top bar hive. :wink:

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Want to add to this discussion bymentioning a keeping method I’ve read about in the states that is referred to as a hybrid hive. The design & intention is that a TBH has Lang boxes on top of bars, where the brood is kept on bars & honey in the Lang to follow their natural urge to place honey above brood. And this supposedly helps with overwintering. This is really quite a simple method to integrate a flow hive into. The mod needs to be directed only at the roof design. Additionally this allows an opening in the top for direct nectar deposits at heavy flow periods & may negate need for excluder.

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Nice! Are the round holes for the flow hive frames??

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Hi Elizabethh,
If you are referring to the photo’s with the round holes in the front, no they are the hive entry and exits for the bees to come and go.

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